


You Don't Need No Training

by justbreathe



Category: Captain America (Movies), Winter Soldier (Comics)
Genre: Animal Abuse, Animal Death, Death, Gen, Other, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-12
Updated: 2015-08-12
Packaged: 2018-04-14 09:21:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4559235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justbreathe/pseuds/justbreathe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Someone once told me that the difference between soldiers and mercenaries is that soldiers know for absolute certain that they're doing the right thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Don't Need No Training

Bucky Barnes had never really minded killing.

He used to shoot down birds when he was little, with slingshots or BBs. His father taught him how to use a gun when he was ten, and told him _never point it at another man unless you're prepared to kill him_ , but he never said anything about animals. Fortunately, Bucky had taken that adage to heart in later years, had never laid hands on another human being unless he was ready to face the consequences. Steve Rogers had liked that about him, more and more as they aged. He'd appreciated it in the war. It had sure saved his life enough times.

Watching a man fall had weight to it, more than just his body hitting the ground or the way he spasmed when the bullet first struck. Bucky could feel the life leaving every one of them, see it in the way their eyes glazed over or the muscles just gave out. Sometimes, when it was one of his own men, he could even hear it.

"Erskine said the serum amplifies everything," Steve said to him in a tent one day, equipment and guns moving around between them as they prepared to go out. Bucky was only half-listening then, but in later days those words were louder than a train whistle in the dark.

_The serum amplifies everything. The physical...and the **not.**_

The Soldier enjoyed killing. When a man gave out under his grasp, there was a weight to it. The sudden slack of muscle that placed every ounce of the body into his power. The sigh of a final breath as it vacated its host's throat. The way eyes lose their lustre, in some immeasurable form of submission. He was power. He was the master of life. He chose when they ended.

_The serum amplifies everything._

Screaming in a corner of a dark room, the Soldier clamped his fingers into his hair and tore. He was burning alive. They had scorched his skin, but most of the blood was not his own. A moment flashed by, and he was pounding on the walls, scraping the nails from their beds deep in his fingers, but always, always screaming. A voice as loud and piercing as the roar of an airplane screamed right back that he was amplified, dangerous.

He had needed it. He needed it because it was release, it was relief. Watching one man die meant he didn't have to die. It meant he was still in control.

James Barnes looked at his face in the mirror and saw the way his eyes changed. Sometimes, they were alive. Sometimes, they were not. Sometimes, they were caught in between. Days like that, he knew, were days when things were not okay.

Some day, a woman would be forced to deal with this. Maybe even Steve Rogers. The knowledge that James Barnes still took life. He had balanced it out with care, over time. At first, once he was back, he had covered the Earth with Hydra blood. He had drowned out the memories of himself and burned them to iron ashes. Then, he had cleansed the last of it from him through mercenary work. He had thought he was rid of the Soldier, that everything was fine now. That now, he was just a man. It was all he had ever wanted to be.

A man, not a weapon. Not the thing that prowled the streets looking for fights.

_Doctor Erskine said_

Bloodied corpses of thieves and muggers and rapists while onlookers screamed or stood in silence, fearing for their own lives. At some point, defense passed into the realm of murder, the line blurred around bulging eyes and pulverised craniums.

_the serum amplifies everything._

God forbid, God save the man who tried to sneak up on him one night. It had taken hours of scrubbing to remove the pulp of intestines from between the metal plates of his arm.

_The physical_

Worst of all, when he couldn't contain it, when the nights were too long and the days too quiet, and the only thing that caught his attention was the rustle of trash from an alley way, the sound of a mourning cry. Their smaller bodies were so weak, tiny bones so fragile, they popped like wishbones and splattered like crushed grapes. Dotted little sprays on cuffs and pink lolling tongues and a sense of shame so deep he couldn't taste food for days.

_and the **not.**_

James Barnes didn't mind killing.

He sure as hell wished he did.


End file.
